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Rice Porridge (Described at page is also)
1199. Rice porridge described at page 292, is also another very economical dish, which may be useful to the poor.
KOLCANNON (an Irish dish). 1200. Boil separately equal quantities of potatoes and cabbages; when the former are fit to peel, take off their jackets, and mix the 1200. Boil separately equal quantities of potatoes and cabbages; two together in a saucepan after pouring off the cabbage liquor, then beat them up together, and add an ounce of lard or dripping to each pound of potatoes. Season with pepper and salt, and most people add to the cabbages an onion or two.
The usable recipe here is the colcannon: equal weights of boiled potatoes and boiled cabbage, mashed together with a little fat and seasoned. It is a one-pot supper and forgiving, but a few points decide whether it comes out fluffy or wet.
- Drain hardThe instruction to pour off the cabbage liquor is the hinge of the dish. Cabbage holds a surprising amount of water; press it in a colander or squeeze it in a cloth before it meets the potatoes, or the mash will be soupy.
- Potato choiceUse a floury variety — russet, Maris Piper, King Edward. Waxy potatoes are more inclined to turn gluey when beaten hard.
- "Fit to peel"Boil the potatoes whole in their skins until a knife slides in with no resistance, then peel while hot, holding them in a cloth. Skin-on boiling keeps them from waterlogging.
- Equal quantitiesRead this as equal weight of raw trimmed cabbage to raw potato. Cabbage loses far more bulk in the pot, so the finished dish reads as potato-forward.
- An ounce of lard or dripping per poundAbout 30 g fat to 450 g potato — roughly two tablespoons. Butter works; bacon dripping is closer to the original flavour. Warm the fat rather than adding it cold.
- The onionBoiled with the cabbage, as written, it goes soft and sweet. Softening sliced onion or spring onion in the fat first gives a sharper, more familiar modern result.
- Cabbage timingModern taste wants the cabbage tender in 8–12 minutes, not the long boil of Victorian practice. Overcooked cabbage turns sulphurous and grey and will carry that flavour through the whole dish.
- YieldAbout 1 kg each of potato and cabbage feeds six as a substantial side or four as a main. Serve very hot, with a well of melted fat in the centre if you want it done in the traditional way.
Colcannon — spelled kolcannon here — takes its name from the Irish cál ceannann, usually glossed as "white-headed cabbage," and the dish is simply the two crops that carried the Irish rural diet through the nineteenth century, mashed into one another. It is traditionally eaten at Hallowe'en, often with charms or a coin hidden in the bowl for fortune-telling, though the everyday version was plain supper food rather than festival fare. Here it sits immediately after a note on rice porridge as "another very economical dish, which may be useful to the poor," which suggests cheap bulk foods were gathered together under the heading of economy. Kale, not cabbage, is used in many Irish versions, and both are correct.